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Title: Archaeoastronomy in the Americas (Ballena Press Anthropological Papers ; No. 22) by Ray A. Williamson ISBN: 0-87919-094-9 Publisher: Ballena Pr Pub. Date: 01 June, 1981 Format: Paperback List Price(USD): $19.95

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Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)

Rating: 5
Summary: Provokes A Pleasantly Concatenated Sense of Wonder
Comment: This book is really terrific. I think that for many of us, "wonder," and a sense of personal contact with grand mysteries, are best experienced through either astronomy or archaeology. What I mean by that is that both of these topics necessitate a personal confrontation with the unknown. The origin of the universe; the fate of ancient peoples; the mythic architecture of dreams uponst which olden folk drew, to explain their place in the cosmos... if these topics don't give you at least a slight frisson of wonder, then, face it, you're hopeless.

This book provides a concatenated sense of wonder by drawing upon both archaeology and astronomy, and distilling many of the most provocative questions explored in each topic. Added to these topics is a tincture of anthropology, which in my mind solidifies the claim that this book has to true neato-hood.

The focus is on the Western Hemisphere, as the title states. The book starts out with a collection of essays by respected, authentic scholars who study this kind of thing. Essay topics include "Archaeoastronomy Today," "Archaeoastronomy and Education," "The Role of Architecture and Planning in Archaeoastronomy," and various and sundry allied topics. If you have a longstanding interest in this kind of thing, you might expect the book to spend a lot of time on the Mayans, because of all the work done on Mayan calendrics, etc. Well, true, there's a lot about the Mayans, but there's also plentiful material about peoples without written records, such as the Chumash, the Apache, some Algonquin tribes, etc.

Let me just point out that the people who contributed to this volume are all respected scholars -- there are no von Danikens, no Velikovskies, no Stichins to call the whole book into question with wild claims about pre-historic extraterrestrial contact, or the like. This book is for real.

The body of the book, like the introduction, is divided into essays by academics with backgrounds in the appropriate fields. The essays are broken up into geographical regions -- North America, Mesoamerica, and South America. Essays delve into all kinds of fascinating subtopics about many archaeoastronomical questions. There is a little essay at the end, about prospects for teaching archaeoastronomy in the classroom. This essay is over twenty years old now, but it still has much of relevance to say.

If you enjoy this kind of thing, you may wish to know about the "Journal of Archaeoastronomy," which you can find either online or in "Magazines for Libraries." Also, you can't go wrong reading anything at all by Anthony Aveni. Anyway, this book is a lot of fun. I would recommend it to anyone.